Thursday, 3 March 2011

Tapas in Valladolid, Spain

This was a small tapas trail that we did in Valladolid in Spain. This was organised by the Winery Pico Cuadro from Ribera De Duero http://www.picocuadro.com/.

Never been to Valladolid and found the city very interesting. Considering that this city has a yearly tapas competition you can really see that they take great care of them.

What follows is the trail that we took and the food that we ate !!

The group who hit Valladolid, a group of chefs, managers and the guys from Pico Cuadro. Vinotinto was the last place we went to and the great thing is that we were all together still by the end.

Beautiful the Spanish Royal Cavalry Academy of Valladolid the start of the night.

First stop Bar Suizo for a beer and a plate of queso manchego and jamon iberico.

Mahou served cold with a good amount of head, creamy and just the thing to start the night off

Ready to start the engines, manchego cheese and iberico ham match made in heaven. Beer, cheese and ham

La Taberna Del Herro, this place is famous for their broken eggs, fired egg and potatoes mixed together in pan. Breakfast for dinner, another beer

Great dish to line your stomach with for the wine and beer to follow during the night. There is a great little addition to this dish which is a pimenton oil and of course some good crusty bread.

Our favourite of the night La Criolla. We had to fight our way into the bar and what place would attract a group of chefs but the open kitchen at the end of the bar. 9 chefs staring at another 6 chefs cooking during a busy Saturday service. Better than watching TV.

Winner of the 2004 Tapas awards. This dish was stewed vegetables on top of courgette with glazed mayonnaise. Interesting liked the idea of the vegetables and the mayonnaise on top a little too rich on the glaze though.

Lamb sweet bread a la plancha, simple but great taste.

This was a mini bocata of piquillo peppers and ventresca of tuna.

Pincho of the month, monkfish stuffed with langoustine and pumpkin shooter. This one we did not like, one of the disadvantages of seeing how things are made is that you can see that the monkfish was cooked in the microwave which made it stringy and dry... Don´t know why they did that since everything else was done great a la plancha.

Supposedly the best croquetas in Valladolid

That dish of croquetas basically last about 30 seconds on the bar.

Here they are... not bad creamy in the centre and light. Good but have now started a croquetas file. This one goes into at 6 out of 10... like more flavour in my croquetas

Bar Jero, was like walking into a typical basque pinchos bar. Bar Jero has won a lot of awards in the recent year in the Tapas competition and they make some very taste pinchos what follows is a carousel of pinchos that I can´t remember them all... they all where sweet tasting but good

Red wine, switched from beer as things where heating up.

Your guess is as good as mine, what I do remember is that the bacon and cheese with barbecue sauce was sickly sweet but reminded me of barbecue pizza. There was a foie gras with raspberry, smoked salmon with cream cheese. All good but I suggest don´t order more that 1 or 2 as they are heavy and cloyingly sweet.

Warm pinchos as well very good but with sweet predominating through them as well. Can´t remember what they were but there was one with prawns... think the wine had started.

Vinotinto, the guys of the kitchen was kind enough to allow us into the open kitchen , great Asturian made coal barbecue.

Pulpo a la gallega, ok don´t need to explain this because it was very very good and disappeared quickly enough. The potatoes in cachelos and just a right amount of pimenton picante.

Take your eye of the ball for a second and that is all thats left of a chuleton de vaca vieja... literally took a sip of wine and looked away for a second and bang gone.... the bone was really good though.

There ends the photo tour as we then finished and moved off for Gin and Tonics. The camara was packed away into my pocket from then on. Though for those who are interested Valladolid has a 4 to 1 girl to boy ratio when going out. But we where advised that it is very difficult to start conversations with them....we tried though !!!! But that is another story.

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About Me

Love food and love what I do. As a chef who works hard but also like to enjoy the finer things in life I wanted to add my little grain of sand about food and food related things.
Unlike other people out there my view comes from the inside of a busy kitchen looking at what people do outside.